Pathways to Peace, a wide-ranging conversation on regional politics, power dynamics and the historic and ethnic conflicts of Israel and Palestine, will be held at 6 p.m. in Bailey Hall on Monday, March 10.
Three years before Cornell was chartered, Andrew Dickson White, our co-founder and first president, wrote a letter in which he outlined his “ideal university.” To read it from the perspective of 2025 is to hear the echoes of Ecclesiastes: “What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again.”
White’s aspirations for his envisioned institution reflect the civil and social issues of his day, as much as they do White’s own educational philosophy. He sought a university “where the most highly prized instruction may be afforded to all — regardless of sex or color”; one that would “give a chance for instruction in Moral Philosophy, History and Political Economy unwarped to suit present abuses in Politics or Religion.”
White wrote in an era even more divided than our own: War had already split the nation, and religious and social factionalism threatened to splinter it. Convictions of politics and religion, dogmas of race and class, social convention and economic interests shaped the narratives of the day and of the past in ways that reinforced those divisions. To change the course of the future — to create a pathway toward a peaceful and cohesive democracy — demanded a different approach.
Cornell’s twin commitments to access and to open inquiry and expression lie precisely in the conviction that every voice must be heard and every life valued for a democracy to thrive and society to prosper. Open inquiry, in White’s day as in ours, is the antidote to corrosive narratives — what enables both students and citizens to see and respect other views, work together across differences and conceive of solutions to intractable problems. It requires us to set aside preconceptions and prior assumptions and be receptive to new information and understandings. It requires, as well, that we do the difficult work of delving, with honesty and respect, into other lives and experiences — ready to change our own understanding.
Next week, in Bailey Hall, we will be holding an event that will uphold those values by modeling civil discourse around one of the most complex socio-political conflicts with some of the most divisive narratives of our day. Pathways to Peace will bring four experts on Israel/Palestine to Cornell’s campus to deeply examine the complexities of the region: the modern politics and regional power dynamics, built on millennia of history and conflict, that have shaped its current reality.
Moderating the event will be Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon. The panelists will be Salam Fayyad, former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority; Tzipi Livni, former vice prime minister and former foreign minister of Israel; and Daniel B. Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel.
The event is free and open to the Cornell and local community. A general admission ticket is required; tickets can be reserved here, with a limit of four tickets per person. I look forward to joining you.
Michael Kotlikoff is the interim president and former provost of Cornell University. His two-year term as president began in July of 2024. His office can be reached at president@cornell.edu.
